There is a need to face the terrible reality of Africa-based researchers who are constantly faced by paywalls, ruthlessly expensive access, and publication fees. While Africanists in western universities benefit from their institutional subscriptions, the rising costs of scientific journals are unsustainable even for Canadian universities, let alone for under-funded African academic institutions.

Some time ago, a note by Haythem Guesmi entitled « The gentrification of African studies » appeared on the analysis and criticism website Africa is a country, from which the quotation in the epigraph is extracted.